


Watch it All Go Up in Flames

by crabmoss



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Death, Graphic Description, Major character death - Freeform, Violence, no happy ending, theres so much....
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24603241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crabmoss/pseuds/crabmoss
Summary: Death is common in the zones, but one strange killjoy can only die in the strangest of ways.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Watch it All Go Up in Flames

**Author's Note:**

> this is based off a dream so it probably doesn’t make much sense but the concept wouldn’t leave me alone. enjoy!

“Poison, Poison wake up!” It was a simple known fact in the diner that they had one mattress, and that they took turns sharing with each other from night to night. Tonight happened to be Fun Ghoul and Party Poison’s turn to share, and in the middle of the night Poison started to hyperventilate. “Poison, please.” Ghoul urged. Poison having night terrors he physically reacted to wasn’t rare, and they all knew how to deal with it.

Poison took a few deep breaths in his sleep before his breathing stopped altogether. Ghoul felt his wrist for a pulse, but he felt nothing. He shook Poison a few times, with no response. Poison appeared…  _ dead _ . Ghoul grimaced and slowly pushed him off the bed, watching as his body slowly rolled and hit the floor with a large  _ thump _ . Telling Kobra and Jet could wait until tomorrow, right? He could sleep with a dead body on the floor for one night, no big deal. It was fine, totally fine.

It was not fine.

Ghoul knew it wasn’t fine, and the moment he turned back over to fall asleep while facing  _ away _ from the corpse, was the moment he started to overthink it. What if something happened to Poison, what if it happened to Ghoul? What if the body disappeared? What if it started to smell? God, what if, what if,  _ what if.  _ It was all too much for him, he needed to do something about it. But what? He didn’t really want to touch the body, not if he didn’t have to, but it looked like he may. Couldn’t it wait until morning? No, it couldn’t.

Ghoul slipped on his full hand motorcycle gloves and started to make his way around the bed towards the dead Poison. He shuddered and reached out towards his bare foot which was most definitely cold and clammy by now, and Ghoul  _ knew _ he wouldn’t feel it through the gloves but just the thought of it was grossing him out. In the same manner he’d pick up a dead animal, Ghoul somehow managed to start dragging Poison away by the foot, just hoping nothing would happen and he could get the body out without any complications. Things never worked out that well for Ghoul, did they?

Poison’s foot twitched, and Ghoul dropped him and jumped backwards. He watched the body for any more signs of movement, or if the twitch was just a one time thing. Just when Ghoul decided it was safe to approach once more, Poison moved again. His hand jerked onto his chest and it looked like he was trying to revive himself, until his chest went up and down. He had started breathing again. Ghoul watched in terror from a safe distance and tried to figure out exactly what Poison was doing.

Poison’s eyes shot open and looked around, though he didn’t stand up yet. Ghoul was unsure of whether he could. Poison’s mouth opened and it looked like he was trying to talk, but no words came out. His breathing hitched and he grabbed at his face, pulling at the skin. His hand fell down from his face and reached his collarbone, where he tore a part of his skin with his nails back until it bled. He was fighting with himself.

“Poison?” Ghoul asked, still watching from his safe distance away. If Poison was as violent towards others as he was with himself, Ghoul wanted no part of it.

Poison dragged his now blood soaked hand across his jacket and smeared it all down the front of him until his hand reached the floor, which he used to push himself up and look at Ghoul with wide, wild eyes. “No.” His voice didn’t sound like himself. Despite how dead he looked, his voice sounded more alive than it ever had before. “M’name is Stef.” There was obviously some issue with his speech because he didn’t sound used to his voice, but that could be pushed aside for now. The important thing was that  _ this was not Poison anymore _ .

“Pois— Stef, you’re uh, you’re bleeding.” Ghoul approached a little farther than he had been and sat by Stef’s feet to still keep his distance from the formerly dead Killjoy. 

Stef looked down and tried to wipe his collarbone off, and pressed his hand down so the pressure would keep it from bleeding and looked back up at Ghoul. “Where am I?” He was very visibly not lying when he said this, his eyes were zipping back and forth looking at everything in the diner hallway.

“You’re in the diner.” Ghoul spoke calmly, because the person sitting in front of him, for all Ghoul knew, could still be hostile towards him. 

Stef looked around the diner hallway, at the walls and the dim ceiling light, at Ghoul sitting by his feet. Ghoul saw the hurt in his eyes, he wasn’t hostile but he seemed in pain. Stef still had his hand covering his collar bone, which held down his cut and kept the blood from dripping down. “It’s calm here.” He said, although he’d looked away from Ghoul and down at his chest, where he took his hand away and revealed the scabbed over cut. Much quicker than a normal scab, but Stef had just died and come back so it didn’t seem unlikely to Ghoul at this point. “Can I wash this off?” He looked back down at the scab.

Ghoul nodded. “Uh huh,” Ghoul was still a little scared of Stef and got up before he could, darting the ten feet down the hall so he was on the far side of the bathroom door and could watch Stef enter.

Stef pushed himself to his feet and grabbed onto the wall for support, before sliding along the wall into the bathroom and slamming the door behind him. Ghoul felt like he was invading Stef’s privacy by standing there and listening, so he found his way to the dining room and laid down in one of the booths, where he was hoping for Jet or Kobra to find him in the morning. 

—

“Ghoul….” Ghoul heard and felt Jet trying to wake him up at some point in the morning, so he sat up and looked around to see if anything disasterous had happened with Stef. Nothing yet, so maybe this wouldn’t be too bad after all. Having a friend who’s undead and going by his old name won’t be bad, surely. “What’d you do to Poison?” They asked. Shit.

“I didn’t do anything,” Ghoul defended. “Did that himself.” It was true, the only thing Ghoul did was attempt to drag Stef down the hallway and out of the diner when he had assumed he was dead. He didn’t actually ‘do’ anything to Stef. “Wha’ happened?” He was still waking up, so it would take a minute to comprehend, but without explanation Ghoul and his bed head followed Jet down the hallway to the room he had started last night in. “Oh…”

He was greeted by Stef sitting on the mattress, hair bleached and cut short, wearing a black t-shirt Ghoul never saw him wear by itself and black jeans he didn’t know Poison even had, and studying Kobra’s switchblade. Kobra himself was laying facedown on the floor, not dead but definitely hurt. 

“Something wrong?” Stef asked. Before he stood up he launched Kobra’s switch across the room and stuck it into the wall beside the door. 

“Who are you?” Jet asked. They had dealt with Stef long before they woke up Ghoul, if the tone was anything to go off of, and they looked about ready to fight him. If they did, Ghoul was getting out of the diner all together and going to Cherri’s. He’d seen what Stef did to his chest, and Jet was one of the strongest people Ghoul knew. Those two could result in either a gun and knife fight or a fist fight and either one would be evenly matched. If it were regular Poison, Jet would win without a doubt, but this wasn’t Poison. Ghoul feared for Jet Star and Party Poison’s body just as much as he feared for himself.

“Me?” Stef asked in an innocent tone. “I’m Stef.”

Jet sighed and shook their head. They had gotten this answer before Ghoul left, most certainly. Ghoul looked to Jet with a curious expression so they explained further. “When we came in here, Stef tackled and knocked out Kobra, then looked up at me like he was expecting me to be impressed or some shit. I don’t like this, Ghoul.”

“ _ You _ don’t like this? I had to watch Poison die and revive himself after I dragged him into the hallway!” Ghoul was still  very upset from the events of the previous night and was taking out his discontent on Jet. He hung his head as soon as he heard himself, but Jet mussed up his hair even further and wrapped their arm around his neck. It was a wordless apology and forgiveness. Ghoul glanced back up at Jet, and the two nodded in unison. They knew what they had to do.

Jet and Ghoul held up their respective ray guns and each stood on a side of Stef. Ghoul even took Kobra’s as a backup in case he tried anything. They set them to stun and held them to Stef’s head. As he watched the way Stef sat stock still with the guns to his head, Ghoul realized he thought he was back in his Battery City days, with a little less restraint on how he reacted to Killjoys (more specifically: his brother).

Stef had another knife in his jeans, which he stuck into Jet’s leg, prompting them to shoot Stef. He fell back and hit the bed, but only temporarily. Within a moment he was sitting back up, seething in anger and dripping blood from the side of his head where bone was revealed. Had Jet’s life not been at risk and he wasn’t running purely on adrenaline at this point, Ghoul would have run out of the room and gotten sick outside. 

Stef was breathing hard, but he was still breathing and looked like he was calming down. Which was odd but welcome, neither thought they would be able to fight Stef without feeling guilty about it, let alone worse. Jet even shooting him seemed to have taken a number on Jet too, their light blue ray gun had been dropped on the floor by their boots.

“I’m decaying…” Stef said in that lively voice that didn’t actually sound like his. He was still not used to using it, it sounded like and the more he repeated those words the more garbled it became, until he was barely understandable anymore. Once Stef finally stopped and looked around, his expression towards Jet and Ghoul was completely different. “Jet Star,” he said. “Take me outside to die.” His voice sounded like his own again, this was no longer Stef but Poison, their Poison. The one who had loved his crew like brothers and talked softly with them in times of crisis. Ghoul got no recognition from Poison, but he didn’t mind that. Now that he calmed down and was properly taking everything in, he needed to get away from here as soon as possible. He wouldn’t let himself until he saw Poison die, no matter how horrible it was to watch.

Jet carried Poison out to their mailbox, who was still bleeding and now picking off dying pieces of skin as he draped off Jet’s shoulder. Ghoul woke Kobra and told him what was happening, and the two embraced and walked outside with their heads down together. Kobra grabbed Poison’s jacket from the foot of the mattress, and waited as Jet placed Poison gently in front of the mailbox. They placed Poison’s mask on the ledge, which had been in his gun holster beside his box of matches and no gun.

Ghoul and Kobra waited as Jet whispered something to Poison and held their forehead to his chest, before they shed a few tears over Poison’s face and stepped back. Ghoul and Kobra came up next, and placed Poison’s jacket over top of him. Kobra made sure Ghoul was on the side where he couldn’t see the blood, before each placed their hand over the jacket then stood up. 

The three living Killjoys stood and watched in the hot morning sun until Poison’s chest rose and fell for the last time, at which point Jet and Kobra pulled the body away from the mailbox and Kobra covered his body in lighter fluid from his own lighter. Jet took a match from Poison’s box and lit it before throwing it onto Poison so they could make sure he would be with the witch and wouldn’t come back looking for revenge. He went up in flames and they left him to burn away, none of the killjoys wanting to inhale the smoke.

The moment he got inside the diner, Ghoul collapsed onto the ground and started to bawl his eyes out. He never wanted this, he never wanted Poison to die in the same bed as him, he never wanted to have to burn Poison’s body away after he became undead and tried to kill Kobra and Jet and probably Ghoul if they’d let him get that far. He didn’t want Poison’s last words to be him begging for Jet Star to carry him to his death bed by the mailbox. He didn’t want most of Poison’s last moments to be him believing he was back in the city. It was all much to take in and the more he recalled the past twelve hours the harder he cried. He just wanted things to be okay for once but now Poison was gone and things could  _ never _ be okay again.

**Author's Note:**

> not gonna dive into the meaning of this one, but I am so sorry about it xoxo


End file.
